I'm staying next to Vince and Lonnie's Motorhome on Irish Bayou, in the City of New Orleans. Although it's a little hard to say "New Orleans" and "Irish Bayou" in the same sentence without laughing out loud. I'll give you a hint - we're OUTSIDE the levees.
To be completely accurate, I'm at N30 7.9459 W89 52.0242. If you GoogleEarth it, you'll see two of Vince's Airstreams. The peninsula is about 3 miles long but it's criss-crossed with lagoons and bayous so where we're parked, it's less than 100 FEET wide from water to water.
Pre-Katrina it was a mix of commercial shrimpers and crabbers and weekend camps. There were over 100 buildings. Now there are about 15. Although more fishermen are gradually returning, the weekenders have found they can't justify the high insurance rates for a weekend place.
But what an incredible place to spend some quiet time. Less than 20 minutes from the French Quarter.
Here are pictures of a sunrise
And here are pictures of a sunset
Friday Vince and I took his boat out for the day. Irish Bayou, Lake Borgne, Lake St Catherine, Lake Pontchartrain and a bunch of bayous so small they don't have names.
Then Saturday Vince, Lonnie and I trailered the boat to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and took a long ride on the Tchefuncta River, where Vince spent his weekends as a child. Here's a picture of one of the homes, not Vince's.
Almost all of our neighbors here on the Bayou are watermen, so yesterday Vince walked across the road to our nearest neighbor's dock when he returned from the lake and bought 40 crabs - for $30.00. And with apologies to my Chesapeake Bay friends, they were the BEST I've ever had. Fat and juicy and sweet. A combination of Vince and Lonnie being great cooks AND the fact that it was less than 3 hours between the time the crabs had been swimming in the lake and when we dropped them into the pot.
Life is Good.
